No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.— Gregory David Roberts, author of Shantaram, a novel.

Menu

The Flower Days

In the beginning………….there were the flower days………….they followed the days of heroin and hypodermics.

It was a time of cleansing………….the sweet smell of the burning grasswashed away the stench of old cookers………….fish-hook hypodermics………….and selling myself to old menon the streets of the worm-core Apple

Suddenly it was like Tinkerbell of the Peter Pan story…………………….had finally appeared on my window-sill…………………….and dropped the magic on me

……………I flew that night……………we all did……………we danced the Woodstock even before it happened.

At first it was the Window-pane………….the four-way Sunshine………….the Owsley Blue Acid………….and they sang to us to “Love the one you’re with.”……………………..And we did.

We didn’t know that it meant to love ourselves.…………But we loved you with a passion.

…………Getting high was the quest for God.…………Getting high was sweet love in the mosquito-dusk.…………Getting high was old friends…………………….in the soft-afterglow of the moonshine.…………Getting high was the sweet smell of hemp…………………….in the cloud-mountain morning…………………….back at the commune.………….Getting high was the scent of She slipping back…………………….into the sleeping bag with two joints rolled…………………….rolling acid on her tongue…………………….and she kissing the power-hit pungent smoke…………………….deep into you…………………….the sweet organ honey from the night before…………………….was the perfume dancing you deep into each other.There could be no going back.

Who would want to?

Then the nightmares crept into the dreaming.………….We would dream awake.………….Flying on crystal meth for days.………….The loving ended.

The fucking began.………….Seven days later we wondered when we had last slept.Pulling away from each other as sweat poured from pores………….and blood spilled from our genitals.Searching and running crazy from one damage to the next.Faces eaten by drug lust.The dealers cutting the dope with screams and rat poison…………..as the needle boys slithered in snake-skin soft.

Getting high was sucking strange cock………….in the cobblestone dawn of the Big Apple.Getting high was the brown-breath of rotting teeth………….calling from the mouths of children.Getting high was hiding from the face of an Alien God.Getting high was sheleaping into the air with blood runningout of her nostrils and earsand screaming for someoneto take the shot back out of her veinwhen no one could.

Getting high was seeing her die and not being able to stop.

Getting high was lockdown on maxi-tiersomeone slipping a joint through the bars andafter you smoke the pinner…………..peace and love and all that shityour cell-mate asks you“what would you do if I set you on fire……………………while you sleep?”Getting high was hands shakingsitting on the shitter in McDonaldsdope in the cookeryou drop your vial of clean waterand draw up the water from the toiletto shoot the dust of lost dreams into your veins.

Never dreaming it could end like this.Never dreaming angels could die and blow away like dead leaves.Never dreaming that the alleyways would be home to so many.Never dreaming that hospitals, institutions and death………….demon-sighs in the night………….past lovers becoming hag-bag legions pushing shopping carts………….genius poets screaming rhyme through Haldol haze

praying for electro-shock to take them home……………………………….would become acceptable facts.

Never dreaming that you could dream again.

Even the old mean didn’t want us anymoreblown away powder-boys and girls of the sweet sixties.Dead leaves burning in chemical piles…………..on the heated grates of cities that should have no names.

Some of us still remain………….to tell tales of how it was………….and how the times of light became darkened.

We only sing these tales………….like tellers of old because we are compelled………….by what was once an Alien God.